Around the mid 19th century, an invention consisting of bellows and
a free-reed mechanism appeared in central Europe. A completely new musical
instrument was born: the accordion. This new instrument deeply influenced
the popular music of the time and brought a large number of people closer
to the world of music. To meet the many different demands of the numerous
local musicians, accordions became more and more diverse through the decades,
never resulting in a standardized musical instrument. This meant that
it was practically impossible to make an electronic version of the accordion,
as the instrument would need to consist of a very complicated mechanism
in a cabinet that was still compact and very easy to carry around.
In
1967 Ikutaro Kakehashi, the founder of Roland Corporation, a leading manufacturer
of electronic musical instruments, travelled to Italy and had the chance
to meet some accordion craftsmen in the city of Castelfidardo in Le Marche,
known worldwide as the birthplace of the accordion manufacturing industry.
He was so fascinated by this instrument that he bought two accordions
to bring home and started to cherish the dream of creating an electronic
accordion.
This
dream was also supported by Francesco Rauchi and Luigi Bruti in Roland
Europe S.p.A., members of the Roland Corporation group located in Acquaviva
Picena, in the Marche region.
Thanks to the advanced results of their state-of-the-art research and
development processes, Roland finally achieved another milestone in the
history of digital musical instruments: the V-Accordion, or "Virtual
Accordion", equipped with a powerful digital modelling technology.
The V-Accordion blends the Italian tradition of musical culture with Japanese
cutting edge digital technology, combining Le Marche's traditional accordion
craftsmanship with contemporary electronic musical applications.
To reach this goal Roland established close relationships with the craftsmen
and technicians of the accordion manufacturing companies in Castelfidardo
and its surrounding area.
Roland was able to perfectly reproduce the accordion sounds by using Roland's
unique digital technology, "Physical Behaviour Modelling", which
does not alter the way essential components, such as the bellows, are
used. Air is still pumped by the bellows in a totally authentic way, but
activates a high-definition pressure sensor, instead of reeds. Roland
thus designed an innovative accordion without disrupting either its traditional
nature or the musical technique required to play it.
As
mentioned above, the accordion is not a standardized musical instrument;
there are different types of accordion for different musical genres and
also for different countries. The V-Accordion can faithfully reproduce
all the various models of traditional accordion, including their different
tuning features. Consequently, you can change a V-Accordion immediately
from an Italian accordion into a French musette, a jazz accordion or a
bandoneon. This means that an accordionist who plays different musical
genres or wants to explore new sound frontiers doesn't need several acoustic
accordions - just one V-Accordion.
Thanks to its remarkable flexibility, the V-Accordion can also be configured
in many different ways and also provides easy access to various free-bass
systems from some of the most expensive and heavy accordions.
While developing the V-Accordion, Roland's engineers thought: "Why
not utilise the bellows to play other sounds often available in electronic
instruments such as the Violin, Trumpet, or Sax?" That's why, as
well as accordion sounds, the V-Accordion has several orchestral tones
that the accordionist can play with unprecedented expressiveness, thanks
to the control that the bellows have over the sound of these tones.
As it is a digital instrument, the V-Accordion is naturally open to
the world of MIDI, allowing it to be connected to other electronic instruments
or to a computer for sharing sounds and data. Many accordionists had
long been dreaming of this possibility, but it had previously been extremely
complicated and expensive to add a MIDI interface to an acoustic accordion.
Indeed,
it is not the only accordionists' dreams that have been fulfilled by
the V-Accordion: because it can be listened to using headphones, it
is possible to study or practise without disturbing people nearby. There
is also no need for continuous maintenance, such as tuning the reeds.
Moreover, thanks to its audio output sockets, the V-Accordion can be
easily connected to an external amplification system without timbre
alteration or risks of unwanted "feedback" effects, so common
when an acoustic accordion is amplified using microphones, especially
for accordionists playing on stage.
When all is said and done, the V-Accordion is not intended to replace
the traditional accordion but to complement it and expand its sound
potential, while keeping expressive features unchanged and without losing
that particular feeling you get when playing and holding a true musical
instrument in your arms.
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